Original Internet Tech & Culture

Not all citizens have a smartphone using a locked-in operating system, specifically Android or iOS. There a bunch of reasons why one might not have one. But the biggest other reason than aging citi...

Last September I went to a workshop at the Lorentz Centre in Leiden to discuss mathematics and AI with historians, philosophers, computer scientists, AI researchers, and mathematicians of several d…

cross-posted from: https://fed.dyne.org/post/1085869

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This research interrogates the emergence of Algorithmic Multipolarity as the definitive structural logic governing the twenty-first-century international order, positing that global authority has undergone a profound ontological shift from Westphalian territoriality toward a "Superposition of Power" instantiated within vertically integrated computational architectures. Utilizing Benjamin Bratton’s "Stack" model, the study traces the reorganization of sovereignty across stratified layers—from the geophysical materiality of semiconductor fabrication to the predictive modulation of the User Layer—identifying a systemic transition from disciplinary enclosure to a regime of Algorithmic Governmentality. Within this configuration, the political subject is reconstituted as a fragmented "Dividual" governed through predictive simulations, while the activation of Weaponized Interdependence at technological chokepoints triggers a "Heracles Syndrome," incentivizing secondary states to construct "Digital Lifeboats" and adopt Strategic Multi-Homing to safeguard infrastructural autonomy. Ultimately, the thesis theorizes the consolidation of a Post-State Regulatory Order characterized by a Polylateral Imperative, wherein technical protocols and interoperability scores supersede traditional treaties as the primary mechanisms of governance. By synthesizing materialist geopolitics with post-structuralist critique, the paper provides a rigorous roadmap for navigating an international system defined by a planetary-scale computational metabolism.

Theo Baker’s book about Stanford offers a shockingly frank look at a campus that is as tightly governed as a Siberian labor camp—one perhaps designed by Sergey Brin.

A large new Archive.org upload by doomcrypt gathers CCRU and related materials. For sound research, the strongest route runs through sonic fiction, jungle, AUDINT, hauntology, Orphan Drift, media ecology, and cybernetic theory.

Big buyers agree to deals that will deliver historically enormous margins and profits

Play Quake in your browser with no install. cssQuake renders the game as inspectable HTML and CSS powered by PolyCSS.

Every generation of computing believes the interface it loves will last forever. It never does. I saw information move from floppy disks to BBSs, from BBSs to the Web, from the Web to Flash, from Flash back to open standards, from websites to mobile apps, and now from search engines to AI chat interfaces. The Web will not vanish overnight, but the Web as we know it, the open place where people search, click, read, browse, publish, and discover, is already being replaced by something more convenient, more centralized, and much harder to escape.